The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Bulletin

ART OF THE AMERICAS
Jar
Arkansas (Caddoan), i th-I4th century
Ceramic
Height, 8 in. (zo.3 cm)
Gift of Dr. Rushton Eugene Patterson, Jr., i991
I991.69
Grave Marker
Philippines (Sulu Archipelago), mid-I9th or early zoth century
Wood
Height, z8 in. (71.1 cm)
Gift of Charles and Harriet Edwards, 1990
1990.338
Wooden grave markers constitute a form of artistic expression
characteristic of the Sulu Archipelago of the Philippines. The
grave markers vary from representational to abstract and geometric.
A tendency toward abstraction may have its origin in
the Islamic character of the islands.
This grave marker consists of a detachable standing anthropomorphic
figure on top of a canoe-shaped horizontal element,
or boat form. The boat form is engraved with curvilinear and
floral designs on two sides; two flat openwork wooden projections,
carved with similar floral and curvilinear designs,
extend from its front and back. The slightly representational
human figure indicates this was a marker for a male grave.
Male grave figures in parts of Sulu show a tendency toward a
plain, geometric style that is carved simply or not at all;
some religious Muslims of the area seem to find even the most
rudimentary carving of the human form to be unacceptably
animist. Female grave markers, in contrast to the rounded and
often plain male markers, are flat and have ornate comb-shaped
central elements.
Although this piece represents a localized tradition, it demonstrates
the stylistic and iconographic affinities of Philippine
sculpture with other artistic traditions of Southeast Asia.
Ceramic traditions of considerable individuality flourished along
the great rivers of the American southeast during the late
centuries of the precontact era. So important were rivers to the
cultural development of the time that the era takes its name
from the greatest of them, the Mississippi. Many of the ceramic
objects of the Mississippian period were severe in design
and restrained in surface treatment. Judicious use of shape,
color, and elaborative patterning contributed to the measured
simplicity of these vessels, the most eloquently plain of which
are those known as seed jars. Apparently intended as storage
containers, the seed jars were made in tall, ovoid, neckless
shapes, as in the present example. Dark gray fire clouds produced
during the firing process are the only embellishment on
its surface.
This seed jar is said to have been found in east-central
Arkansas, an unusual source for its type, as most similar
works have been found in the great bend area of the Red River
in southwest Arkansas and adjoining portions of Louisiana,
Oklahoma, and Texas.
JJ
PG
Bibliography: Irwin Hersey, Indonesian Primitive Art, Oxford (in press).
Related reference: David Szanton, "Art in Sulu: A Survey," Philippine
Studies, ii, no. 3, pp. 465-502.
88